People-focused knowledge management

Comments: Fancy Foods executives decided to lose no time
whatsoever to respond and to ascertain that its products were
safe and that the marketplace was fully informed.
The knowledge-related aspects in this case rest on the president’s
and company’s management philosophy and the shared understand-
ing of how to follow up and take steps to implement philosophy
intents in difficult situations.
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Enterprise Situation-Handling Has Many Levels
In any enterprise, situation-handling occurs on many levels. Top
management needs to handle competitive, regulatory, and strategic
situations, often resulting in quite aggregated decisions without
opportunities to deal with implementation in detail. Most often,
implementation (execution) of the desired actions will be delegated
to lower organizational echelons. Typically, this is the way enterprise
strategy is implemented. It is also the approach used in many other
managerial decisions, such as promulgating new customer policies
and new operational practices.
As always, the effectiveness of execution becomes a function of 
the knowledge available and other capabilities. In addition, it also
becomes a function of how well the lower echelons understand the
upper level decision. When execution is delegated to lower levels, it
is important that the people who are asked to implement it under-
stand both the details and background of the decision. They need
that understanding to fashion and carry out the practical steps and
improvisations that are required to achieve the decision objectives
under circumstances that normally will have been unknown to the
decision makers on higher organizational levels and therefore could
not be part of the plan.
A schematic illustration of the four-level delegation of enterprise
strategy implementation is depicted in Figure 6-6. From this per-
spective, delegation of decision execution at one level results in a
whole new situation on the next level that must be interpreted, and
implementation details must be decided upon and executed. At each
lower level the situation-handling is monitored throughout, both
from the perspectives and goals of the present and higher levels.
There is a constant need to know that the planned actions are imple-
mented in accordance with the top level’s wishes.
The Importance of the Situation-Handling Model
Initially, we may ask: “Why is the situation-handling model impor-
tant? What valuable insights does it provide? Why should we be con-
cerned with such level of detail?” There are many answers to these
questions, all having to do with improving the effectiveness of people
and whole organizations. Whereas this book is cast from the perspec-
tives of KM, the situation-handling model pertains to most people-
focused, organizational, and technology-based action-oriented
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systems, be they simple and small or complex and large. The model
— as all models — is a simplification, and from a systems perspective
it is a variant of a regulatory feedback system. It does not depict 
specialized processes, many feedback loops, and other functional 
pathways associated with learning, innovation, dealing with uncer-
tainty, or evolving situations, although some aspects of these are 
mentioned.
The model depicts the situation-handling process from Sensemak-
ing to Implementation of action-options to the best of our current
understanding. It treats the process from a particular perspective in
a simplified and aggregated fashion that also leaves room for other
interpretations. Many premises included in this model are still under
investigation by the scientific community and may well cause us to
revise our understanding and thinking as time goes by.
Enterprise Situation-Handling
201
Apply Knowledge
Make
Sense
Decide &
Innovate
Execute
Monitor
Apply Knowledge
Make
Sense
Decide &
Innovate
Execute
Monitor
Apply Knowledge
Make
Sense
Decide &
Innovate
Execute
Monitor
Apply Knowledge
Make
Sense
Decide &
Innovate
Execute
Monitor